


The Thief of Baghdad

by Parhelion



Category: Nero Wolfe - Stout
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 02:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/pseuds/Parhelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archie should have gone out to a nightclub.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thief of Baghdad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jest/gifts).



One problem that comes with boarding at your employer's brownstone is finding enough distance when you are both busy not having a fight. Nero Wolfe and I had already spent an hour being frostily polite to each other on that appropriately cold evening in December of 1940 before I realized I was both fed up and in no mood for company.

"I'm going to a movie," I told him.

"Good," he said. He didn't even bother looking up from the map of Europe on which he was busy drafting his plan to win the war.

I went out. Given that Wolfe had earlier spent ten painful minutes being polite about Lily Rowan sharing her box with me during this year's opening night at the Met, I swapped my usual movie theater for Radio City Music Hall and the dancing Rockettes. A flashy display of uncomplicated female limbs before my movie started seemed like a good idea right then.

All this goes to prove that, when I had chosen to see _The Thief of Baghdad_, I was in no way planning on ending up inside a men's room stall slumped over a dark and handsome stranger.

Like me, he had been knocked out. Drying blood matted his brown hair and spattered his nattily cut suit jacket. But, unlike me, he wouldn't be waking any time soon. Someone had slid a jackknife between his ribs before parking him on the seat of the john.

My head was pounding, but I had enough brains left to know this was bad. At least the jackknife was new to me; its blade was too long for my taste. I grabbed the handkerchief from my breast pocket and spent thirty seconds checking what I could reach on tall, dark, and dead. His wallet was shoved deep into a trouser pocket I couldn't search without unpleasant and noisy maneuvers. But the pockets in his suit coat produced three ticket stubs for various showing of _The Thief of Baghdad_, a half-empty matchbook from Tony's over on Fifty-second Street, and a worn clothes-check stub from the Everard Baths. Hooray: the deceased was both floral and careless about it. Not his fault, but that would sure add to my impending problems.

When I had replaced the evidence, I pressed my handkerchief to my head and came up with blood, no surprise. After triple-checking that my companion was gone for good, I opened the stall door and staggered out into the black-and-cream tiled restroom, trying for an exit before my brand new concussion made me complicate a crime scene. This being Radio City, the handful of men at the tall, art deco urinals studiously ignored me. However, the skinny guy washing his hands at the sink felt free to goggle, his expression reflected back from the round mirror.

It was too late to duck the looming disaster. "Call an usher," I told him. "There's a problem."

Of course he had to walk over and peer into the open stall behind me. Then he had to start yipping like a hound with two paws newly stepped on. Given the state of my head, I would have preferred it if he screamed. It made me glad there were plenty of free stalls available for my needing to do what concussions make you do, luckily without more of an audience than I already had. The men's lounge was almost empty for a restroom serving a theater with thousands of seats. I'd find out later that I woke up during the movie's climactic flying carpet scene, leaving me missing the winged horse along with the rest of what I had come to see.

From watching Abu the thief meet a genie to leaning on a corpse, from leaning on a corpse to throwing up, and from throwing up to Lieutenant Rowcliff: my evening out was all downhill. The lieutenant and I have a deep and special relationship based on my being sidekick and Secretary of War to Wolfe, Manhattan's fattest and smartest private investigator. Lieutenant Rowcliff resents Wolfe for making a monkey out of him and me for being paid five times Rowcliff's salary in order to help Wolfe have fun.  To be fair, given all the times the lieutenant escorted me down to various precinct basements for the Third Degree before the cops got sensitive about Wolfe's growing roster of influential clients, I would have helped make a monkey out of Rowcliff for free. Serving the public weal can aid the digestion, or so says Wolfe.

"Come on, Goodwin," Rowcliff said with the usual sneer on his too-handsome face. "Quit shamming. Who's your dead friend from the gent's?"

"I'm not shamming, I'm concussed. At least, I am according to your police surgeon." The gray-haired fellow draped in a stethoscope had checked my pupils and clicked his tongue before applying a temporary bandage and recommending a trip to the hospital, but such details were too petty for Rowcliff. He had me sitting in one of the stylish chairs next to the mirrored pillars in the downstairs lobby, much to the distress of the glossy assistant manager hovering behind the handful of cops surrounding me. Behind him hovered a line of ushers, and behind them hovered an eager crowd. The newshounds should have been somewhere in the middle of all this, but Rowcliff had the uniforms keeping them away.

The manager tried again with, "Surely you gentlemen would prefer privacy. My own office—"

"You can't tell me you don't know anything about a guy you shared a bathroom stall with," Rowcliff said, ignoring this attempt at discretion, "unless that kind of anonymity is your latest style." I just loved the way he grinned at his own humor.

"Knocked out. Concussion. I'm missing all my memories after Abu opened the bottle on the beach. If you ask me again, I'll say the same thing again, unless the fifth time you ask is sometime tomorrow when something might've come back."

"Uh-huh. Somehow I think those memories of yours will come back faster in a jail cell."

On most evenings, such a diversion would have resulted in no problem worse than a lingering reek of disinfectant the next morning. But somehow I couldn't see asking some drunk to poke me awake and check my pupils once an hour for the rest of the night. I skipped raising an eyebrow at Rowcliff because it would have hurt and said, "I think it's time for my lawyer."

"I think it's time for you to start talking." He leaned forward with his entire body, as if he was beginning to forget both Wolfe's influential clients and the sightseeing crowd.

I hadn't been doing much except for talking and trying not to prod my new bandage for the past hour. At least I had enough sense left not to remind Rowcliff of this. Instead I stared at the patrolmen milling around us, trying to push past my headache and remember what had happened. It was hopeless, but at least the effort let me notice the stir among the spectators before the lieutenant did.

Speaking as someone who sees a lot of movies, there is the scene when the cavalry comes over the ridge, and then there is the scene when full orchestration swells as they come over the ridge while they are supposed to be clear across the Territory. I was not really surprised to spot Nathanial Parker, Wolfe's lawyer, using both his evening clothes and his knickerbocker manners to work through the throng around me. But I was shocked to see who followed in Parker's wake like a gargantuan ocean liner being escorted by an especially patrician tug.

Nero Wolfe, who almost never leaves his brownstone on Thirty-fifth street except in hot pursuit of a rare orchid or a rarer meal, was scowling his way across the downstairs lobby of the Radio City Music Hall. I realized my face had gone slack with surprise and got it rearranged into a suitable grin before Rowcliff turned to spy my reinforcements.

Before Rowcliff could so much as stutter his fury, Parker drew himself up, minutely adjusted one cuff, and began talking in tones of gentle reproof. I would have liked to have watched him have Rowcliff for his after-theater dinner, but I had more important business. Wolfe had glared a patrolman out of the way and then cooled down his expression to a scowl as he stopped next to my chair and studied me. His gaze even lingered on my bandage for an entire second before visibly moving on to consider whether or not he could shanghai my seat, downright touching.

"Confound it. That chair is too small." He turned to glare around the lobby. "Each one of these chairs is too small. Another fallacy of modern design."

"I know," I said, all sympathy. "If you had telephoned and told them you were coming, they might have ordered something in an extra huge, especially considering that this is said to be a universally welcoming cathedral of the modern age. Of course I wasn't there to dial the phone for you, but you could have recruited Fritz."

Ignoring me, he looked over my head to study one of the murals on the walls, a nicely modern affair. I got my third surprise of the evening when his grunt was considering, rather than disgusted, before he said, "In any case, I want to leave."

"Sure. I'm ready." I heaved myself up out of the chair and everything swayed for a moment. When the lobby came into focus again, Wolfe had the hand not busy clasping his applewood cane committed to holding my arm. He was glaring past me again.

"Hold it." That was Rowcliff's voice, all right. "Don't think that just because you call in a big-shot—"

"Don't waste all of our times, Lieutenant." Wolfe used the rich, carrying voice he employed in the brownstone's office when he had all the suspects assembled and was about to expose a murderer. Even the patrolmen turned to pay attention. "You've let your spleen drown such investigatory instincts as you possess. Seemingly, Mr. Goodwin was taken by surprise by the murderer, who then knocked him out and disposed of him, in a fit of panic, within the same stall as his previous victim. A moment's thought unclouded by spite should have sufficed to tell you who, in this establishment, could secure the privacy for such a deed and carry the weapon to commit it." Wolfe turned to glower past the manager, now looking alarmed, at the ushers behind him, all wearing their uniforms and carrying their flashlights. A few seconds later, the crowd and the cops were looking at them, too, even as the ushers started edging away from each other while shooting suspicious glances at their comrades.

No longer projecting, Wolfe continued, "It is a job suitable for the police, with their numbers and resources, to establish which of these young men had a connection to the victim, has disposed of his flashlight, and is now in flight. Mr. Goodwin has given you his statement; he will communicate any memories that return to him tomorrow. Come along, Archie."

Before Rowcliff could get the situation back under control, Parker moved in to tie him into a few more fancy knots. Wolfe steamed away across the lobby, the crowd parting before him. I was amazed that nobody tried for an autograph. I was even more amazed to see him climb stairs, enough so not to notice that he kept a grip on my arm the entire way up until we were in the main lobby, measuring out its red and gold carpeting with our departing feet.

The assistant manager caught up with us quickly enough to escort us through the side entrance Wolfe was heading for anyhow, which kept us free from the clutches of most of the press.  Only one newshound lingered long enough beneath a streetlamp by the taxicab to tip his fedora and fade back into the shadows.

I said, "Lon Cohen of the _Gazette_. He's the one who called you and provided details."

"You'll need to speak with him tomorrow. I promised him exclusive access. I'm sure you can gift him with some variation on the usual colorful circumlocutions you employ in such circumstances."

"Fine. I even understand why you came yourself. The quarterly meeting of the Manhattan Horticultural Society is next week, and heaven forbid that you have to go through the germination records by yourself in order to be ready to outshine Madame Secretary. But a taxi?"

"Shut up. This situation is grim enough without discussion."

There was an air of true desperation about him, enough so that I swallowed my suggestion we check into a hotel until I was recovered enough to drive us home. He might have taken me up on the idea.

All the way to the brownstone, he clutched the back of the seat in front of him with both hands in a way that was almost as painful to watch as my head was feeling.

Trying to distract him, I said, "That was a waste of an evening out. I never got to see the end of _The Thief of Baghdad_, which was a pity because it was good. I even believed the genie, although he seemed a little thin."

He was too busy swiveling his head about a half-inch in either direction, looking for savage night-dwelling pedestrians about to leap out at us, to reply.

"The next time I feel like going to a movie so late, perhaps I'll reconsider. A nightclub would have been a lot more respectable. For that matter, a roadhouse would have been more respectable. Of course, I couldn't very well go looking for dancing partners after what you said to me earlier."

For just a moment, he tore his attention away from the traffic to give me a level stare that he then directed pointedly at the rear of our driver's head.

Satisfied, I grinned and settled back against the upholstery to enjoy the show of someone else having to put up with Wolfe as a passenger for a change.

When we got back to the brownstone, Doc Vollmer, from down the street, was waiting with his suit coat on over his pajamas. His life was not as tragic as it might have been, since he also had a plate at his elbow scattered with crumbs from Fritz's best pate on toast points, but still. He examined me, undid the bandage, washed up the wound, and added two stitches. Then he gave me a long list of instructions, most of which I could have guessed, before heading back down the street for the minute and a half it took to return to his own bed.

That left me first with Fritz, who gave me a concentrated dose of soft-spoken sympathy before he headed off to his basement apartment, and then alone with Wolfe. Out of instinct, I had parked myself in my office chair after Vollmer was done, and I gingerly swiveled the usual ninety degrees to examine Wolfe where he sat barricaded behind his arcwood desk.

Movies are good for something. I stared at his broad face and closed eyes, thinking of the thief from Bagdad following around his blind, exiled prince only to get turned into a dog. Even with all the temperament, I still had a better deal than that. "Okay. I'll survive. Prepare yourself for Madame Secretary swooning when you announce the results of that _Phalaenopsis Aphrodite_ cross."

He cracked open his eyes a little. "I certainly hope not. The woman is temperamental enough as it is."

"You might get lucky. She might resign out of sheer chagrin."

"I doubt it." There was a pause, short enough that only I would notice. "And you're welcome. Although you would have prevailed without my assistance in other circumstances. That confounded lieutenant who searched my house is a fool."

"You know Rowcliff's name. You're just holding a grudge, even though I won't blame you this once. Lucky for the corpse you cut in. I had time for half a search, and the deceased was obviously 'that way'. Rowcliff might not have bothered tracking down the killer if he couldn't have pinned it on me. I'm also betting he won't have much luck finding an obvious connection between the deceased patron and the usher in question, at least not one his cops can get somebody in the bars or the baths to verify. Three to two odds."

"The lieutenant is fortunate this murderer showed an inclination to funk." Wolfe frowned. "That may have been your good luck as well."

"Yeah. I'm happy the usher didn't stick around to finish his second job. On the other hand, he could have tried claiming that his victim panicked him in a different way and so spared me a crack across the skull when I interrupted whatever I did. Maybe he didn't think he could explain the jackknife. Or maybe the boys from vice will stumble across a long-term connection someone can prove." It was my turn to frown. "Failed blackmail attempt, lover's quarrel, who knows? Some kind of funk, all right. Too bad it took him like that."

"There will always be those who don't flourish outside the overgrazed fields fenced in by social constraints. Unlike you." This time, the pause before he continued was long enough that Saul or Cramer might have spotted it. "Archie. I didn't mean to imply, when I said you were quite properly pleased with Miss Rowan and the new opportunities she provides you, that you are somehow thus required to abandon any of your customary habits for more conventional behaviors."

This kind of talk always made my head hurt, but right now it hurt anyhow, so what the hell. "That's good, especially since Lily is taking a trip down to Palm Beach to see an old friend, and I'll be out late dancing with Marjorie Lowell Wednesday evening. Not to mention, someone has to wake me up once an hour for the rest of tonight to stare at my pupils, and you already sent Fritz off to bed. At least I've witnessed those yellow pajamas of yours often enough to grow numb."

You could have mistaken his tone for gentle when he said, "Blatherskite." I knew his tone really conveyed something else, but as I wrote earlier, what the hell.

"Your bedroom," I said. "There's more room on that well-padded billiard table you call a bed since you planned properly for your mass. In fact, all the gargantuan reminds me of someone from the movie tonight." I though this over. "That's right. The genie. What would you think of granting me three wishes?"

"You'd waste the first one because of your concussion," he said. Then he snorted, but the noise was indulgent, and I've worked for him long enough to know. He levered himself out of his chair, came over to me, and checked my pupils before offering me a hand. Considering the special circumstances, I took it and let him pull me to my feet.

One advantage that comes with boarding at your employer's brownstone is no distance to deal with when you are both busy not having a fight.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to (My Beta) for the speedy and dead-on work!


End file.
